Quit Smoking - Help is Out There

Stopping smoking is the single best thing you can do to improve your health and increase your life expectancy.

There are a number of therapies available to help people quit this terrifically addictive and available habit including NHS support, nicotine patches, Allan Carr's group sessions, hypnotherapy, reiki, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and the list goes on.

The benefits of becoming a Nonsmoker are vast such as

• Becoming healthier,
• Having more energy
• Having a greater feeling of control in life
• Being able to us your disposable cash for positive purposes
• Have more time
• Feel really good for your achievement
• Seeing smoking for what it really is

Habitual behaviour is often a comfortable way of being as it can provide us with a sense of security especially if our lives are particularly fraught or unpredictable. As a Hypnotherapist who helps people become Nonsmokers, often people will talk about their habit as a friend that's always there for them. I guess there's truth in that as they are always available and can provide that stable comfort. However, if I had a friend who I had to pay lots of money to, who was damaging my health and was a mass murderer - the incentive to be with him would have to be pretty strong. And the addiction is very strong, otherwise everyone would quit with ease.

As a therapist, I seek to allow the transition from Smoker to Nonsmoker to be as easy as possible and to feel the psychological rewards from new wanted ways of being. I have found a number of techniques to be very successful; such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming as well as focusing on Hypnotherapy. It's an absolute must for people to really want to stop - as if the desire is not there, then change cannot happen. You can't make people do something they do not want to do.

Often we try to avoid change as our mind likes to keep us in our comfort zone as ultimately we know we are safe in repeating past behaviours because we're still here. We will stay in our comfort zone, even if we know it's not the best place for us to be, as we prefer what is familiar and routine to what is new and unknown.

Effective help and our own added self-awareness can help by allowing us to stop the behaviours that we do not like and that are damaging to ourselves and others around us.